William James Croft

reconnecting heart-intelligence; biotech engineering, Lightfield Systems

[Norm Eisen @NormEisen]

The Trump admin’s case against Davey Hearn should have never been brought. Its dismissal today does not erase the abuse of government power in arresting and charging a patriotic American who did nothing wrong. The administration owes Mr. Hearn an apology. https://t.co/V37bONO45M

[Democracy Defenders Action @DDAction_]

History shows that attacks on democracy often start with efforts to control the information people rely on.

That’s why we’re helping lead the #BlockTheMerger coalition: to protect a free and independent press.

The fight is far from over. https://t.co/eC3QQbIf6J

[Democracy Defenders Action @DDAction_]

DOJ is asking the Supreme Court to let taxpayers foot the bill for Trump’s personal $83 million defamation judgment.

This is exactly why Blanche is unfit to lead the DOJ: he continues to put the president’s personal interests ahead of the American people. https://t.co/wbZgSfzAwr

[Democracy Defenders Action @DDAction_]

A democracy needs a free & plural media landscape.

The Paramount-Warner merger could put CNN & CBS's historic news archives under one owner—giving a single company more control over the footage that helps document our shared history.

We're fighting back. https://t.co/XILoI9rW3m

[Democracy Defenders Action @DDAction_]

Sens. Blumenthal & Van Hollen held a hearing on Trump's crypto corruption & insufficient ethics guardrails in the CLARITY Act.

DDA’s Virginia Canter warned, Congress must demand divestment, disclosure & independent enforcement to protect consumers. https://t.co/cgKr2FuspO

[Pizza Pepe @PizzaPepe]

Flock Camera tutorial.

The more you know ✨✨

[Senator Chris Van Hollen @ChrisVanHollen]

This was a malicious prosecution from the start — totally shameful. These prosecutors should be held accountable for their actions.

David Hearn’s story shows why we can never back down in the face of bullies. 

https://t.co/FlfoX0T1hc

[Reuters @Reuters]

Exclusive: More than 12,000 people were arrested ‌by ICE following tips from the Office of Refugee Resettlement during President Trump’s second term, according to internal government data reviewed exclusively by Reuters https://t.co/UqTOCSNqul

[James Finkbeiner @JimmyBianchi]

@WhiteHouse @USAmbCanada Canada should stop offering assistance in Colorado where one of our brave firefighters was killed supporting our American neighbours. They disrespect our sacrifice. Shame on Trump and @USAmbCanada

[Brian Pearson 🇺🇸🌊💙 @btrekman1]

@SecMullinDHS @DHSgov Bullshit is nonstop.

[evan loves worf @esjesjesj]

Time to fix grok again

[HUMAN WA$TE @Dplanet]

🚨🚨 Here's the world's richest man, Elon Musk, calling Nicholas Kristof "an utter piece of shit and a liar."

Look at what Kristof actually asked him first.

Just a simple question: we were saving a life every ten seconds, we cut it off with no time for anyone to adjust, so children died who didn't need to - and isn't it bad when children die unnecessarily?

There is no answer to that question that leaves you looking human. "No, it isn't bad" is monstrous. "Yes, and I did it anyway" is a confession. Every honest door was shut. So Musk didn't reach for an argument. There isn't one. He reached for "piece of shit."

A man proud of his work defends it. A man who calls his critic a liar, with not one fact to offer, isn't proud; he's cornered.

Let me be clear about what this is and isn't.

This isn't an argument against America First. I'm not saying America must fund the world. I'm not saying cutting waste is wrong, or that foreign aid is sacred, or that a government can't decide its own priorities. I grant all of it. Waste is real. Cutting it is legitimate. None of that is in dispute here.

This was never about whether to cut. It's about how.

There is a version of this that a serious person could have done. Review the programs. Find the waste and cut it. Wind down what doesn't work. Keep the eight-year-old on her HIV medication through the transition. Hand off to other funders with time to adjust. That's cutting. It's slow, and careful, and afraid of getting it wrong - because the person doing it understands they are holding millions of lives in their hands.

That is the weight of a decision like this. Anyone who grasps what USAID did - an agency a Lancet study credits with preventing more than 90 million deaths - moves carefully, because the cost of moving carelessly is measured in human lives. Most of us, handed that, would feel the burden of it. We'd agonise. We'd run the scenarios, weigh the harm, look for the version that cut the waste without losing the child.

Is there any sign Musk felt one ounce of that weight?

He got a chainsaw. He put on the cap and the dark glasses and walked on stage like a rock star, vamping for the cameras. He posted about the parties he skipped to do it. He handed the job to a team with no expertise in aid, no evidence of waste presented, and let them hack the whole thing into a wood chipper over a weekend.

And now that the dead have names - Yamah Freeman, who died in childbirth when the diesel for the ambulances stopped; Achol Deng, eight, whose HIV medicine ran out; the children Kristof went to the villages and heard their parents' stories first hand - his answer is that the reporter is a liar.

Here is the part that should reach even those who cheered the cut. America First means protecting Americans. During an Ebola outbreak, as the agency was gutted, his appointees stopped the screening of US-bound air passengers - the people flying onward into American airports. That didn't put America first. It left the front door open during an outbreak. You could have voted for every dollar of it and still see that this was not what you were promised.

Because there is a difference between "we shouldn't be the world's charity" and "it's fine that children died." The first is a position millions of decent people hold in good faith. The second is where the chainsaw took them. Most people who voted for the first did not vote for the second.

I'm not going to reach for a clinical word. I don't need one, and neither do you. Watch what Elon does when the exits are shut, and call it whatever you think it is.

But I'll say this much, and I'll flag it as a moral judgment and not a legal one: to hold in your hands an agency that kept 90 million people alive, and to end it with a chainsaw and a grin and no visible weight at all - that belongs, morally, in the company of the great crimes. Not because a court would say so. Because a conscience would.

Why can't the man who cut the aid own the decision?

Why cry that Kristof is a liar if the work was righteous?

Where is Mr. Chainsaw now, when the names of the dead arrive?

[Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof]

Elon Musk says that no one died because of his demolition of USAID, and that "Kristof is lying through his teeth." So here I invite him to join me on a visit to Africa to see for himself: https://t.co/TVEoFX8gzj

[Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof]

My weekend column is a long look at how the Nordic countries achieved economic success (Norway has higher per capita income than the US and also enjoys higher productivity), relative equality and some of the highest levels of happiness in the world. But I'm struck by how knee-jerk the reactions are: The American left is inclined to emulate Scandinavia and the right is inclined to savage it.

Partly, I think, that's because both tend to confuse the Nordic model with socialism, when it's basically about free markets coupled with wage compression and very heavy investments in human capital and in empowering women in the labor force: Excellent child care, family leave benefits, flexible work, education, etc.

But the model is under real strains from immigration and fiscal pressures, and it's rooted as much in norms as in laws. I don't think the US can adopt it wholesale, but I do think there are things we can learn from it -- especially the investments in young people. And when you see a model that generates such economic success and individual happiness, it's crazy to dismiss or fear it. Here's a gift link to my column: https://t.co/EwuZYSLeuO

[Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof]

Trump not only seeks vengeance against his enemies but also fleeces his own supporters.

[Gabrielle Giffords @GabbyGiffords]

Well, she looks pretty great to me @captmarkkelly 😘

[Eric Nuttall @ericnuttall]

The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve is now ~19MM barrels away from estimated minimum operating levels. There very soon will no longer be a safety buffer to protect the world from further losses out of the Strait.

[Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof]

This seems a time when we need a dollop of hope about America and its future. Here's mine: https://t.co/kQDwD38cEs

[Vesper Aegis🇵🇸 @VesperAegis]

You literally just got done calling a reporter "utterly evil" and a "piece of shit and liar" for calling you out on DOGE's demonstrably deadly effects on children in Africa.

And then you proceeded to say that any American who doesn't love this country is traitorous.

Do you even hear yourself, Mr. Open-Minded Enlightenment?

[JJ @JosephJacks_]

In the early 1970s, @StuartHameroff began writing about microtubules as molecular computers. By the mid-1980s, he was writing Ultimate Computing. When the book was published by Elsevier in 1987, it had cited no fewer than 14 scientists who would go on to win Nobel Prizes — in physics, chemistry, and medicine — across the following four decades.

This may be the only book in human history with such profound prescience across so many domains.

Future Nobel laureates in Physics cited:

•Roger Penrose (2020) — cited for his 1957 Nature paper with his father Lionel on self-reproducing mechanical analogues

•John Hopfield (2024) — Hopfield nets discussed across multiple chapters

•Geoffrey Hinton (2024) — Boltzmann machines, parallel associative memory

•David Wineland (2012) — 1986 paper on observing quantum jumps in a single atom

Chemistry future laureates cited:

•Robert Huber (1988) — protein conformational flexibility

•Thomas Cech (1989) — catalytic RNA / ribozymes

•Ahmed Zewail (1999) — picosecond spectroscopy of DNA/RNA torsional dynamics

•Gerhard Ertl (2007) — STM surface topography of Pd single crystals

•Martin Chalfie (2008) — C. elegans neuronal branching

•Martin Karplus (2013) — protein dynamics simulations

•Michael Levitt (2013) — protein normal mode dynamics

•Eric Betzig (2014) — near-field scanning optical microscopy

Physiology or Medicine future laureates cited:

•Eric Kandel (2000) — cellular basis of learning and memory

•John Sulston (2002) — C. elegans neurogenesis

Hameroff also explicitly discusses the 1986 Physics Nobel (Binnig/Rohrer for STM) in the book — and a 15th future laureate, J. Georg Bednorz, would win the Physics Nobel later that very year (1987, high-Tc superconductivity), with his silver-films STM paper already cited in the nanotechnology chapter.

https://t.co/Rzp7K3o6px